I am often asked by the media if, in my Rich Habits Study, I found any evidence that the wealthy were frugal or cheap. For some reason, they like to lump these two traits together as if they were one in the same. They are not. Being frugal is very different from being cheap. [Read more…]

Once a habit is formed, it’s hard to break. If you forge good habits, those good habits will become harder and harder to break over time.And they will pay dividends your entire life.

Where did you pick up most of your habits in life? I’ll bet you never gave it much thought. Your habits did not just manifest out of thin air. They came from some source. Each source, good or bad, inspired you to adopt certain habits. The habits we adopt in life primarily come through associations we make in life, our education, our experiences and our environment.

Parents, teachers, supervisors, coaches, family, friends, spouses and teammates have the most influence over the habits we forge in life. Because good habits pay dividends throughout your lifetime, they are perhaps the best gift mentors can give to their mentees.. What are some of the best habit gifts mentors can give?

The Habit of Reading – Reading opens up your mind. It can take you to exotic places, acquire unique knowledge or help set you on the right path in life. One book can alter someone’s life, so giving books will pay dividends that are hard to put a value on.

The Habit of Exercise – Exercise is not jut good for the body, it’s good for the brain. And there are many recent studies which provide evidence that exercise increases your life span. Offer your kids, friends or a work colleague to become your gym partner. In a few months, the gym habit will form and will pay dividends for the rest of their lives.

The Habit of Building Rich Relationships – Teaching others relationship-building habits such as making happy birthday calls, life event calls and hello calls helps them to build strong, lifetime relationships. Equally important is teaching others the habit of focusing their relationship-building efforts on the people who will help improve their lives, or Rich Relationships. Rich Relationships are relationships you build with other positive, success-minded people. Because birds of a feather like to flock together, when you forge one relationship with a positive, success-minded individual you tap into their network of positive, success-minded relationships. These Rich Relationships pay dividends throughout your life by opening doors for you. They also help guide you in life in taking action and making decisions that will help improve your life.

The Habit of Saving – When you learn the importance of saving early in your life, this habit pays dividends down the road in the form of financial independence. Thanks for modern medicine, individuals can now look forward to living into the eighties and nineties. That one habit gift of saving can therefore pay dividends that last throughout your retirement years.

The Habit of Being Frugal – Being frugal is not the same as being cheap. Frugal means spending your money on quality. Quality purchases last for many years and that means you can enjoy that car, furniture or dress for a long time. When you give the habit gift of frugality, you are giving that person a period of extended enjoyment in the purchases they make during their lifetime.

Most who were raised in poverty inherited limiting beliefs that hold them back in life.

Those who are able to rise from poverty and become wealthy found mentors who possessed success beliefs or employed certain strategies that enabled them to remove their limiting beliefs and implant success beliefs, effectively re-programming their entire belief system.

In this week’s video we discuss how the wealthy adopt certain beliefs that promote success:

The American Dream has been around since the founding of our country. It became a reality to millions in the mid-1800′s during the Industrial Revolution. Poor, starving families left their farms and agrarian way of life in search of opportunities in the booming cities of America. Millions relocated into these thriving cities in search of opportunities that not only enabled them to avoid starvation, but to prosper. As the American Dream rewarded those courageous souls, the economy grew into the largest economy the world has every known.

Andrew Carnegie is perhaps one of the best examples of the American Dream at work during that time period. A poor Scottish immigrant who, in spite of his abject poverty, worked hard and smart to pull himself out of poverty and into the history books, to become, at the time, the wealthiest man in the world.

The American Dream made that possible. It offered every American, and every welcomed immigrant, hope for a better life. Those who embrace the American Dream believe every generation will be better off than the last. They believe that, no matter the circumstances you were born into, you have the opportunity to rise above those circumstances.

Our founders created a Constitutional Republic which virtually guaranteed that the forces of evil who seek to undermine and destroy the American Dream, would ultimately be vanquished by a seemingly innocuous right built into the fabric of the Constitution – the [Read more…]

Most who were raised in poverty inherited limiting beliefs that hold them back in life.

Those who are able to rise from poverty and become wealthy found mentors who possessed success beliefs or employed certain strategies that enabled them to remove their limiting beliefs and implant success beliefs, effectively re-programming their entire belief system.

In this week’s video we discuss how the wealthy adopt certain beliefs that promote success:

In my Rich Habits Study I focused my research on individuals who had amassed at least $3.2 million in net assets and also generated $160,000 or more a year in income. I was able to document over 300 data points on the rich and my study has been highlighted in 25 countries.

Well, Wealth X does something similar. Every year they gather data on some of the details of all of the world’s billionaires. It’s a massive undertaking. I thought I’d share with you some of their findings and then compare it to my findings on millionaires. Let’s get started: [Read more…]